That Blackbird Grief
by intriKate
Summary: The Doctor looks at his companions and sees the jagged reflections of himself.


That Blackbird Grief

_One for sorrow, two for mirth,  
Three for a wedding, four for a birth,  
Five for silver, six for gold,  
Seven for a secret not to be told.  
Eight for heaven, nine for hell,  
And ten for the devil's own sel'._  
-The Folklore of Birds, by Laura C. Martin, 1999

+

The older he gets, the more he hates photographs and mirrors.

The myths about how they steal the soul are not inaccurate. He hasn't much left to take.

+

Slowly he is teaching himself to say goodbye, after so many years of flight. He has never wanted to; never look back, never look forward, never stop moving. But by now there have been so many people that sometimes they're waiting for him when he gets there. It isn't that he doesn't want to see them -he does, desperately, why on earth wouldn't he?- but they are followed by trains of baggage, like an airport at Christmas. They have shadows sewn to their feet and each shadow looks like his: clouds of shadows, all flickering and fluttering away, but oh so firmly sewn in place.

(He dreams he meets Wendy Darling. "We've met," she says curtly, and closes her window to him.)

+ _One for sorrow, two for mirth._

He runs from Jack, who is a boy always letting the stars shine in his eyes no matter how high the shit comes rising above his knees; that boy thinks that the starshine is love and the Doctor lets him. But he is wrong, wrong, lingering outside the lines of time and always avoiding death; the Timelords who might have instructed on how to live like that are gone and their lessons were ones the Doctor fled.

Jack is the first to be left, this time around: the first terrible mirror. He loves indiscriminately (his lovers are always left unsatisfied) and dies heroically (and so does everyone else, while he comes back and moves on without a glance) and makes the decisions that no one else can make (like the one for which his daughter will never forgive him.) The Doctor sees this one reflection of himself, and still thinks he looks reasonably whole.

+ _Three for a wedding, four for a birth._

Often he does not lie because he does not care enough: the truth will not bother him again after he disappears into the centuries. As he leaves Rose at Dårlig Ulv Stranden the second time, he lies because he cannot admit the truth to himself (his last and only companion.)

But he has looked at this woman he wished for, for so long, and she is not his Rose; she cares too much about the roots of her hair and she dresses in clothes that match his mourning and when she smiles, her teeth don't show (like a wolf, masquerading.) The universe tires her, where once it woke her to brilliance.

She has saved the universe (again), saved more than one universe: so did he when he ended the Time War, ended everything.

(He looked in Donna's mind as she slept away the memories of the Trickster's Brigade, and as they faded away he snatched the glimpse of Rose, laughing as Donna displayed terror at the sight of the thing on her back. Donna can't remember this, but he can't forget.)

As long as you're living for something, living is enough, but Rose gave that life to preserve the universe a long time ago. He can tell by the way the shadows cling to her eyelashes and linger behind her like the ghosts of the wings with which she once flew.

When he leaves his double, whose eyes are so new and ready to see the universe with a grin and an outstretched hand, he tells Rose that this Doctor is like the one who winged his way alone out of the burning embers of the Time War. But Rose is the one who wraps herself in leather and sees the spin of the earth, and when he leaves her on the beach, the new Doctor reaches for her hand, to begin something new.

He leaves them to it. There is always something new to begin.

+ _Five for silver, six for gold._

For the extent of trouble Martha threatened to be, expecting so much from him that he simply didn't have to give, she is actually the easiest to see. Perhaps it is because he gave so little to her, turning away when she would have him reach for her.

When she must cross the world alone, she does; when she must hold a finger on the button to destroy all of her own species, she will; when she must fly away, she spreads her wings and makes sure to take something shiny before she goes.

The Doctor keeps her adventurous spirit and Martha keeps his phone number and they both manage to save enough trinkets to line their nests with; they still must search for mates, in order to make their homes.

+ _Seven for a secret not to be told. _

And his Sarah refuses to go by the name he called her, holding all of her names close as if a new identity will push her further from her memories of the girl she once was, and she _still _fails to fly ahead of the storm of their past. She huddles like a dark bundle of feathers in the snow: by being cold she can make herself numb, and think survival possible in a world where it is always winter and never Christmas. But numbness was never for her, this wild girl with her heart so close to the surface.

Sarah Jane Smith wears her age lightly; even though her new face has lines, her eyes are the same, and he could never fail to recognize her. She has become as full of secrets as he is, not by nature but by the necessity of not knowing anybody else that shared her experience of coming back from other worlds (and what happens next.)

The lines of time burn her hands as they do his, as she sees the present and future and passes those burdens along nonetheless. Sarah Jane shows Rose a future of abandonment; she shows her neighbor Maria a future of living alone as everyone with whom she once shared adventures has died (and beyond that, an attic room and the pitying glances of strangers who confuse the whimsy of memory with the fog of dementia.)

Even keeping a name secret is no guarantee of preventing a legacy of damage; it's an inheritance they are compelled to pass on, one that keeps them from being entirely alone.

+ _Eight for heaven, Nine for hell._

The Doctor tries to avoid meeting other incarnations of himself. They usually don't get along and it's awkward and bad for avoiding paradoxes. It's embarrassing to see himself so young and stupid.

That said, he sometimes can't resist stealing happy moments from the past when his younger selves aren't looking.

+ _And Ten is for the devil's own sel'. _

Mirrors and photographs fade in comparison to the real actual soul Donna took from him, a soul that died and was resurrected in her with the metacrisis. He doesn't resent her having it; no, he loves her fiercely, having been proud of her since the first time she squawked at him (well, maybe a little after that.) Now he thinks her brilliant, not just using his brain but integrating it into her own to make something entirely new. She has decided she will travel with him for the rest of her life and he almost thinks he wouldn't mind.

She _does _travel with him the rest of her life, because something in her dies when he pushes all the memories back behind doors of bad dreams. He only does it to protect her, yet it feels like what he does to her mind is so much worse somehow, so _violating_. He abandons himself as he abandons her: he leaves one other version of himself on a misty beach in another universe, and another version on a rainy doorstep in Chiswick.

So many reflections begin looking like piles of shattered glass instead of individual mirrors, and instead of light they reflect darkness, like the rainbow of colors in a blackbird's wing. He longs for the footsteps of each of his companions, and dreads the ghosts of their songs.

When he leaves this fraction of Donna behind, chattering away on the phone, he looks back at her as he walks away.

She does not give him the goodbye he craves, and the door falls shut behind him.


End file.
